Activate 4 New Four-Finger Gestures on Your iPad

With the assistance of a simple app, iPad 1 or 2 users running iOS 4.3 can take advantage of a series of four new multitouch gestures which Apple plans to make standard in future updates to its mobile OS.Developers currently have access to the new multitouch gestures, which are there for Apple to get developer feedback on possible inclusion in future versions of iOS.

These new gestures, which all require four fingers, are:

Swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar;

Swipe down to hide the multitasking bar;

Pinch with four fingers to return to the home screen;

Swipe left or right to switch between active applications;

These new gestures are pretty great, and really serve to make iOS feel more powerful. But what if you're not a developer? Why should you have to continue to suffer through hitting the Home button all the way on the bottom of your iPad? Happily, there's a workaround that will only cost you $5, as long as you're using a Mac of some flavor. If you buy the Xcode app from the Mac App Store, you can enable your iPad for use as a development machine, which will activate the multitouch gestures.

For iPad-owners who want to try these new features today, Gizmodo has a video of the gestures in action, along with a step-by-step tutorial on how to enable them.